


One Shot, One Story

by SaigonTimeMD



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Feel-good, Feelings, Gen, Hair Braiding, downtime, snarky old lady
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 05:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9371093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaigonTimeMD/pseuds/SaigonTimeMD
Summary: This series will be a repository for shorter works related to my overarching Overwatch stuff that don't actually fit in the main storyline(s) but that I still want to be read. There won't be a great deal of connection from story to story besides the fact that they're all my interpretations of the characters in my interpretation of the Overwatch world. Thanks for reading!





	

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amélie visits Ana with an unusual request.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Thanks for taking a look! This short little bit of writing was inspired by some amazing fanart by [Arctg, which showed Widowmaker her hair all braided up - and Ana bein' real snarky about it, so I assumed she braided Amelie's hair FOR her](http://arctg.tumblr.com/post/155858060598/braids-are-awesome). I started wondering what circumstances might lead to such a fantastic event, and this story is what came out of that.
> 
> If you like what you see here, you can follow me on my [Tumblr](http://saigontimemd.tumblr.com/), where I'll periodically post about my writing in addition to all the ridiculous stuff that I post about (which is still mostly Overwatch).  
> Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy!

                Ana Amari looked up from her book as a soft knocking at the door caught her attention, and she cocked an eyebrow. The late-morning sun streamed through her windows, casting the earthy browns of the suite living area in a peacefully glowing gold, and the couch was so comfortable, the moment itself so pleasant, that she was willing to pass the sound off as a figment of her overactive imagination, as some unsecured plumbing in the depths of the barracks, but when she heard the knock a second time – no softer or louder than before – there was no escaping the fact: she had a visitor. As she quietly placed her book on the coffee table and rose off the couch, she wondered who could be at her door at that hour; most everyone else was either deployed or in VR training, or at least _supposed_ to be. There was one obvious possibility, but _he_ couldn’t have made a sound that quiet if his life depended on it, not even when he was trying to be stealthy. Who else, then, could it be? She pulled her plush, white robe tighter around her body, and walked to the door before pressing her finger against the small black panel on the wall. The automatic door slid open silently, revealing the blue-faced, dead-eyed stare of Amélie Lacroix.

                She was tall, but the loose-fitting turtleneck and Overwatch-branded sweatpants made her seem unnaturally gangly, like a deep-cerulean scarecrow. The nearly knee-length blue-black hair that curtained her head did nothing but enhance her uncanny appearance. Although Amélie made no movement – indeed, her eyes barely refocused from the flat door surface to Ana’s shocked expression – Ana reflexively took a step back, her muscles tightening for a fight. They stood silently on opposite sides of the threshold for a long moment, but the fight never came, and as Amélie blinked once, a hint of life in that unsettlingly placid face, the moment was broken.

                “Good morning, Amélie,” Ana coughed dryly after swallowing the lump in her throat.

                “I have a request,” Amélie stated. Her jaw tightened slightly, barely a centimeter of movement, but Ana, whose career _relied_ on centimeters of movement, caught it. “Good morning,” the blue-skinned ex-assassin added, “Mlle. Amari.”

                “What can I do for you, Amélie?” the older woman asked, crossing her arms.

                Amélie’s thick lashes rose, and her virus-yellow eyes met Ana’s desert-brown, finally looking _at_ her for the first time that morning.

                “I would…I would like…” Amélie’s right hand twitched, and she turned to walk away. “Pardon.”

                Ana caught Amélie’s arm, the baggy black fabric crumpling in the older woman’s steady grip, and she was reminded of the muscle that lay beneath. No heat, just tension.

                “Amélie, what do you need?”

                “I would like you to braid my hair,” the ex-assassin mumbled as she stared down the barracks hall. Because she was facing away from Ana, Amélie did not see the mixture of emotions that rose and fell on the old captain’s face – the surprise, the confusion, the amusement, even the flash of anger – but by the time Ana’s insistent hand pulled the ex-assassin into an about-face, there was only a welcoming, slightly-incredulous smile waiting for her.

                “Why don’t you come in, then?”

                Amélie nodded slowly, and followed Ana inside.

                “Would you like some tea?” Ana asked, heading toward the kitchen first and rummaging around the drawers.

                “No,” Amélie said, before adding, “No, thank you, Mlle. Amari.”

                “Call me Ana,” the older sniper directed as she closed the drawers. “I feel old enough already.”

                “Oui, Mlle. Ana.”

                Ana turned around the find Amélie staring at her again.

                _I meant just call me Ana, like you used to._

                She sighed.

                “Come. In here.”

                Ana led the shuffling ex-assassin into her living room, sat down on her couch, and motioned to the floor between her legs. Amélie nodded and slowly lowered herself onto the carpet. The older sniper couldn’t help but be unsettled by Amélie’s deathlike lethargy: when the ex-assassin had the luxury of her Talon skinsuit, she moved with the grace of a dancer and the lethality of a concealed knife, her every move as fluid as it was precise, but without the skinsuit’s spinal-response nanoweave and muscular-enhancement modules, Amélie moved like a rusted machine, like every inch was a labor, like she was a corpse suspended by invisible strings. She even spoke slowly, choosing her words to fit however much energy she could muster. Whether her mind was as affected, Ana did not know.

                The thought occurred to Ana that she had left her hairbrush in the bathroom, but as she gathered up Amélie’s hair, she quickly realized that further brushing was unnecessary. She ran her fingers through the fine black strands, and the shining, silken threads flowed between her fingers like dark water. _She must’ve spent hours combing it_ , Ana thought. _Perhaps that is why she’s so slow today._ Ana ran another hand through Amélie’s hair for good measure, but found no reason to repeat the check a third time. Even as black as it was, it shone in the mid-morning sun.

                _I would’ve killed for hair like this when I was young, Amélie._

                She bit her tongue.

                “Do you have a hair tie?” she asked instead. Without replying, Amélie pulled one of her sleeves back a little and pulled three black hair ties from her wrist. Ana took them and transferred them to her own arm. “Good. Now, what would you like? A French braid, perhaps?”

                “Oui, merci.” If Amélie reacted any further to the joke, Ana couldn’t tell.

                Without any further delay, Ana’s fingers went to work, folding strands of Amélie’s hair over and under each other. It reminded Ana of braiding a doll’s hair, the texture was so perfect it could not belong to anything human. Ana had felt the same way when she’d braided Amélie’s hair before. Before. Before Amélie’s life had been torn apart. Before Amélie had torn Ana’s apart in turn. Before, when Gerard was still alive. Something began to well up inside Ana’s chest, but when Amélie winced loudly, it evaporated like snow in the sun.

                “Amélie?” Ana asked, more surprised than concerned. She hadn’t heard Amélie react to anything so viscerally in the months since the ex-assassin’s incarceration and rehabilitation had begun: a wince from Amélie was jarring as a blood-curdling scream from anyone else.

                “I felt…” Amélie reached up and felt her scalp gingerly, then withdrew her hand.

                “I can stop if it’s too much,” Ana offered, relaxing her hands.

                “The doctor told me feeling would return sooner or later,” the ex-assassin stated. “Perhaps this is the beginning.” Amélie’s head turned to the side slightly, as much of an ‘over the shoulder’ look as she could manage. “Continue, s'il vous plaît.”

                Ana nodded, and the braid grew.

                “So why did you want for me to braid your hair?” Ana asked.

                _Oh my GOSH, look at this braid! If I had long hair, I’d want it done up just like yours!_

_Thank you, Lena, but it might get in the way – unless you plan to slow down?_

_Not on your life, ha ha!_

                Amélie shrugged, and the two of them lapsed back into silence. Ana’s calloused hands continued to twist and enfold Amélie’s hair into a lengthy chain: the ex-assassin’s head would occasionally nod to the side, as if falling asleep under Ana’s careful work, but then she would wince and stiffen again, wide awake – or awake as she got, those days. The braid had taken up a third of Amélie’s hair when she spoke.

                “I am sorry I shot your eye out,” she said, less an apology and more of a blunt statement.

                “Me too,” Ana chuckled, surprised at the frankness of the ex-assassin’s admission.

                “You have not replaced it?”

                “It reminds me not to underestimate,” she explained, “least of all you."

                Amélie’s head cocked slightly to the side, unsure of how to process Ana’s answer.

                “Then…you are not angry?”

                Ana’s hands slowed to a halt, and she sighed.

                “I was, once, but not anymore.” She began to braid again. “It is what it is.”

                The older sniper felt the muscles in Amélie’s back relax against her legs; she hadn’t even realized the ex-assassin had been sitting stiff – she just assumed it was Amélie’s condition – but there was no mistaking the release of tension, nor the quiet exhalation from Amélie’s lips that might’ve been a sigh.

                Ana worked down Amélie’s hair, sculpting it into a long, beautiful braid. It was always easier to do someone else’s hair than do your own, but Ana found herself really quite proud of the nearly-finished result. As she came to the end and reached for the hair ties, the emotion began to swell once more, and although she could focus them, she could not contain them.

                “Amélie,” she began, “when you…arrived here, I said some things about you, _to_ you that I regret.”

                _Gerard was a fool to trust someone like you._

                “You were right,” Amélie said, her voice devoid of any emotion or inflection.

                “I was angry.”

                “You were still—”

                “I was _angry_ , and I was not right. You apologized for shooting my eye out, I am apologizing for what I said.” She slid the last hair tie onto the end of Amélie’s hair. “Now we are even.”

                Ana pulled Amélie to her feet and led her to a mirror in the front hallway. As Amélie examined her newly-braided hair in the golden light, turning this way and that in front of the mirror, touching it carefully with her slender, delicate fingers, her face was a maelstrom of inexpressible emotions muted by her condition into haphazard twitches. To anyone not in the know, it might’ve appeared that she was having a seizure of some sort, but Ana understood it was as close to ‘happy’ as Amélie had come in quite a long time.

                “Still don’t want my autograph?” Ana asked with a smirk.

                Amélie turned around and opened her mouth to speak, the corners of her lips upturned barely a centimeter, but whatever she meant to say caught in her throat with an awkward croak. Ana got the message anyway, and wrapped her fuzzy-robed arms around Amélie in a hug. The ex-assassin stiffly brought her own arms around Ana’s shoulders (being too tall to reach lower at the moment) and squeezed with as much feeling as she was capable.

                Just as quickly as the hug began, it was over, and Ana stepped back to admire the long, purple braid over Amélie’s shoulder. She gave the end a little tug, but the hair held firm.

                “Now,” she said, “why don’t you run along to the dining hall and show Lena? I’m sure she’ll love it.”

                Amélie swallowed hard, then nodded.

                Ana opened the door to her apartment and the ex-assassin shuffled out, then turned back in the hallway one last time.

                “Merci, Mada—”

                “Just Ana, Amélie,” she said, putting a hand up. “And you’re welcome.”

                By the time the door closed, Ana was already halfway back to the kitchen. She walked past the cabinet where she kept her tea and opened up the silverware drawer before carefully taking the serrated steak-knife from its hiding place in her robe, rinsing it, drying it, and putting it back in its place next to the other matching three. She rubbed her knuckles, trying to ease the shaking in her hands, and sank into a kitchen chair, overcome by a mix of exhaustion and relief. She thought about brewing some tea anyway, then changed her mind at the last second and pressed a button on the tiled wall.

                “Yes, hello?” a thickly-accented voice boomed through the kitchen.

                “Get up here in five minutes, _Herr_ Wilhelm,” she ordered. “Bring wine.”

                “Ooooh, spirits before lunch? What would your daughter say?” Reinhardt teased, but she could hear him already moving over the intercom.

                “My daughter is a grown woman, and can mind her own business,” Ana said, “but _I_ need a drink.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you following Ice and the Wasteland, please know I haven't (and have no plans to) abandon it; I thought things would slow down in the new year, but boy was I wrong. There's actually two things in the pipeline for that story right now - one is a denouement for the first day, the other takes place after a week's time skip, so just bear with me. Thanks for reading!


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